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A bold and ambitious project

Renewable Energy in Europe 

Organising the world 

Women in science and technology across Europe 

Transmutation of radioactive waste 

Climate change levy 

Eco-taxes and other steering organs of government 

WEFA oil refining conference 

Energy and the environment 

 Extract from the Parliament magazine, published by the European Parliament winter 2002.

Renewable Energy in Europe

Article for Public Service Review, March 2001

Renewable energy sources (RES) are undergoing important developments at all levels in the European Union (EU). They represent a key element of the present and future EU energy strategy, due to their important contribution to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and environmental protection, as well as their potential as a high growth, labour-intensive sector.

Not only are Renewable Energy Sources, along with energy efficiency, crucial to the achievement of environmental targets such as the Kyoto commitments, but their indigenous and decentralised character can also contribute to increasing the security of supply in Europe, reducing dependency on fossil fuels imports and the risks associated to shortages or price instability.

Furthermore, the European renewable energy sector, which has experienced double digit growth rates over the last few years, presents a great potential for employment creation and industrial development. A wide-ranging European study, in which EUFORES participated, has quantified "The Impact of Renewables on Employment and Economic Growth" using well well-established models. The study reveals a high labour intensity per energy unit produced, particularly in the field of biomass, and foresees a net employment creation of up to 900 000 jobs by the year 2020. An important part of the RES employment would be created in peripheral and rural areas, where it is most needed.

Substantial technological developments have brought down the cost of the technologies down, towards commercial maturity. Moreover, if the external costs of energy are taken into account, such as environmental damage, price volatility, security of supply, employment creation, etc., many RES technologies are already more competitive than conventional technologies.

Nonetheless, development has spread unevenly both between different renewable technologies and between different countries and regions. Despite the technological developments, the true potential of renewables is far from being reached. For instance, in the United Kingdom off-shore wind alone could generate four times the country’s power requirement.

Many barriers are still preventing market breakthrough of renewables. The process of liberalisation has changed market conditions, by allowing customers to choose their energy supplier, but the energy market is still very distorted and this situation will persist as long as external costs resulting from the whole energy cycle are not fully taken into consideration.

It is necessary to establish a level playing field if renewable energies are to be given a chance to compete in a fair market. A new emphasis should be put on the demand side and on customer choice. For this purpose, there are three main needs: policy action to overcome existing barriers, ample communication to raise consumers awareness, and innovative market instruments that allow for the entrance of more new players.

RES are currently high on the EU political agenda. Several initiatives are being developed to achieve both a single market and a sustainable energy model.

Although there is not a single, common energy policy in the EU, the European Commission has launched several programmes and initiatives which affect renewables.

The EU strategy for RES adopted by the European Commission (EC) in a White Paper sets common EU objectives for renewables, includes an Action Plan and a Campaign for Take-Off (CTO). The targets set, a 12% share in the total energy demand of the European Union by 2010 are considered by the European Commission as "ambitious but realistic". Programmes launched include Energy within the 5th RTD Framework Programme, and the Framework Programme on actions in the field of energy, that integrates the SAVE II, ALTENER II and SYNERGY Programmes.

The Directive on the liberalisation of the internal electricity market, adopted in 1997, is also having an important impact on RES development, with resultant deregulation and liberalisation processes in many Member States creating both new opportunities and threats. On the one hand a truly liberalised market could allow electricity consumers to choose their supplier and permit individual renewable energy producers to access the market. On the other hand, liberalisation also leads to mergers, job losses, and a downward trend electricity prices. Lower price levels reduce incentives for energy efficiency, making it harder for renewables to compete. Liberalisation increases the risk for investors who then tend to focus on short term returns, preferring less capital intensive investment, which puts eco-efficient, but capital-intensive technologies at a disadvantages.

Moreover, the current market liberalisation process is incomplete as conventional energies are still being subsidised, and the market is not yet fully transparent.

The liberalisation process us spreading slowly from large to smaller players, which leads to concentration in the absence of effective regulation. Indeed, market liberalisation must be accompanied by policy development to ensure fair market access for renewables.

This concern and the need to harmonise access to the grid of electricity from renewable origin has led to a draft directive on "Electricity from Renewable Energy Sources in the Internal electricity market" (RES-E), an initiative strongly supported by the European Parliament. The RES-E directive establishes, for the first time, individual targets for RES electricity in each Member State.

Currently a variety of support mechanisms are in place in Europe, including investment aids and tax relief, tendering as in Ireland and the UK, and guaranteed prices as presently applied in Germany, Spain and Denmark. The guaranteed price system, which obliges privately owned electricity undertakings to purchase electricity from renewable energy sources at a minimum price, have so far been the most effective. A "green certificate" system is in place in Holland and Sweden, and will be taken up by Denmark in 2001. This scheme, also called green prices, basically consists of requiring that distributors include a set percentage of renewable electricity in their sales, a quota which is represented by tradable "green certificates". Since this scheme is still relatively new the effectiveness of this approach still has to be proven.

Considering these diverse approaches and in accordance with the principle of subsidiarity the RES-E directive is leaving it up to the Member States to choose the schemes they deem most appropriate to achieve the set targets. The schemes will need legal protection from the threat by EU treaty rules regarding State aids and the Free movement of goods.

The European Parliament is supporting various other political EU initiatives that could favour the take-off of sustainable energies, principally:

* the implementation mechanisms of the Kyoto Protocol, that will increasingly discourage greenhouse gas emissions, where renewables and efficiency are of the few really effective measures to achieve the commitments of the EU;

* the proposals for harmonisation of energy taxation, that aims at shifting taxes from labour to exhausting resources, especially those that produce CO2;

* the ever-delayed proposal of a EU-wide discussion on the appropriate mechanisms to include external environmental, social and economic costs resulting from the whole energy cycle in the prices of conventional energies (the internalisation of externalities);

* the proposal of the European Parliament for a European Charter for Sustainable Energy, EURENEW, to set up a common, long-term framework for their development, plus much needed implementation and assessment tools;

* the horizontal integration of the priorities of the EU in its different activities in the field of energy, environment, competitively, and agriculture.

EUFORES is supporting these initiatives by fostering institutional and political support through ample communication activities, by carrying out analysis of issues relevant to renewables, and by encouraging co-operation and involvement of institutional and market actors.

Despite the recent failure of the negotiations on climate change policy at the Sixth Convention of the Parties (COP6) in The Hague, the urgency and seriousness of the problem remains.

It is, thus, more important than ever that the EU show strong political willingness to support renewables and to break down the barriers to their market penetration. Renewable energy sources have a crucial role to play in achieving the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and environmental protection, while ensuring the security of energy supply and contributing to economic development and employment creation.

For any further information, please, contact: eufores@eufores.org

I am very interested that in this morning’s session you were exploring how we organise the world, and I want to push that a little bit further and then to stop talking and listen to you, so this isn’t going to be a lengthy lecture, you will be most delighted to learn.

I think, with the events in Serbia and another country finding, we hope, some sort of liberation from tyranny, it’s a good time to start looking at how on earth we should be organising the world. Clearly, I think we are some way off having a world government, but I think probably many in the room would envisage that in due course we might look at that. We can see the trends which may move us towards it. We have to have the rule of law and security for people wherever they live in the world, and there is obviously a requirement to look at disparities and what they bring about in terms of human misery but also in terms of conflict. We do need to look at the conflicts going on throughout the world, those that have gone on in our lifetimes, and those that are ongoing, to see if we couldn’t start foreseeing the sorts of situations which might lead to them.

We also live on a fairly vulnerable planet where the environment and our human actions have a very strong interplay, and in all of these areas that I have mentioned so far the United Nations is of very great significance. We live in a world with resources which are plentiful but which are very unequally shared, which are squandered, and which are being used in a profligate way. So given that that’s the sort of set-up we have, let’s look at the various ways in which we have tried to organise it.

The nation state I suppose seems a natural way to proceed in that you get people who feel some sort of identity, possibly because of language, because of geographical nearness, because of a shared culture, a shared history. So the nation state seems to be a little bit stronger than we might have thought at one time, and seems indeed to be increasing in strength. One of the reasons the Danes for example said ‘no’ to joining the Euro was nothing whatsoever to do with the effect of the currency on the Danish economy because they are in any case linked to the Euro and their policies all depend on the Euro. It was far more that they were unhappy at losing Danishness and becoming swallowed up, and we know that there are those fears in this country too. People, and perhaps English people even more than Welsh or Scottish people, do feel that there is something they value which is under threat from sharing sovereignty with others.

Alongside nation states of course went empires, and we must remember we are operating in a world very strongly stamped by colonialism. We of course, as many of the larger European countries, were big movers in that colonialism, having ourselves been colonised by the Romans, except that my lot ran to the hills and my compatriots swam across the Irish Sea!

Alongside the nation states there certainly have been empires, built by force, not in the same category at all as some of the international groupings with which we operate, for example, in the EU. Most of those empires were conquests done by force.

Regional groupings are a feature of the world, and in most continents you see some attempt, certainly on the trade level, but in the continent of Europe much more so, in terms of legislation, environmental rules, and amongst some people quite certainly a wish to have real federalism and to bring together those small countries within Europe, and to extend the current European Union to what looks like the natural geographical boundaries if we are to operate on the continental basis, i.e. those countries which form part of the former Soviet Union, the communist countries – all expected to join, in due course, with the European Union.

In America we have the trade agreement NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Area, which encompasses Canada, the United States and Mexico, so on that basis only, since no one would claim I think that the relationship between the US and Mexico was other than one of a very big powerful country and a very poor aspiring country. Canada, although larger in area I believe, is sparsely populated and the relationship between Canada and the US is more equal, economically obviously, than that between the US and Mexico, on that continent.

Africa certainly moves to work in a Pan-African basis, particularly I suppose if you make the split between the Sahara northwards and Africa south of the Sahara which more or less would correspond to racial sub-groupings of people of Arab origin and black African people although that as we know is by no means a strong difference. But certainly African countries meet together and more and more are finding common policies and common wishes to represent themselves.

Asia is different of course. You have got two enormous countries in terms of population: China and India have one-third of the world’s population between them, about 1.2 billion in China, and just about a billion in India now and growing fast. Those countries don’t really need to look any further, and India, on a sub-continent where there is very considerable disparity of religious groupings, and in that area of course that often corresponds to the countries as in the partition of Pakistan from India, largely because of the difference of religion. Asia too is working more and more as a trade area, including Australia.

The religious groupings I just mentioned, some believe, including NATO to my astonishment, will become extremely significant and that the old raison d’etre of NATO, which was in Cold War times to protect Western Europe and the United States from the Soviet menace, as they put it, they now see the north/south menace, where you have obviously impoverishment in the south of the world, but you also have a religious divide between Islam and other religions, either Christianity or none. That’s a way of looking at the world I hadn’t thought of until NATO told me that this was a new raison d’etre for them to protect the north of the world from the rest. You may have some views on that: I certainly did.

There are certain ex-imperial groupings which are linguistic, and the Commonwealth I suppose would be an example there, where although other languages are spoken, English is widely spoken. The French are very very committed to maintaining Frenchness in the world: the French speaking parts of Africa, and the Pacific islands and their Departments in the Caribbean for example and North Africa. This Francophone grouping is one that’s encouraged by the French, they are trying their best to have a counter-balance to the onward move of English. Spain and Portugal of course are both completely outstripped now, as we are, by their former colonies in terms of population. Look at Portugal compared to Brazil – Angola, Mozambique and the other Portuguese-speaking areas – the comparison between the country of origin of the language and the colonies is absolutely enormous. Nevertheless that linguistic link, albeit in Brazil there are other indigenous languages not Portuguese, is important, as is in South America and Central America the link with Spain because of Spanish, and although they speak quite rightly very scathingly of Spanish conquest and of some of the atrocities that took place then, nevertheless there are strong cultural and trade links and friendship links which are based on languages and former imperial groupings.

Now, trade areas. The EU is a trade area, it has a single market. It tries to be much more and is probably the most ambitious international grouping in terms of what it has achieved and what some would like it to go on to achieve. Other examples are in South America, MERCOSUR, which is the two huge countries, Brazil and Argentina, plus Uruguay and Paraguay, setting themselves up. Those countries punch way, way, below their weight. They should be rich countries: Argentina was one of the richest countries in the world, and perhaps we could explore why it isn’t any longer. Those countries are certainly important, and the EU in turn is forming links with MERCOSUR, as it will do eventually I think with NAFTA and with the Far East groupings.

Those are trade areas, pure and simply; they don’t have a democratic element and they don’t have joint legislation. They don’t pool their sovereignty very much to have, for example, the same environmental standards. That’s in theory what we do in the EU, it’s one of the tasks of the EU: environment is a big area. After this meeting I am going to do a short TV interview to explain why our recycling record, which is meant to be the same as that of other EU countries, is nowhere near as good. I don’t know the answer why, but I have to admit that that’s true. Anyway, more than just a trade area.

The EU has 370 million people and growing, as we know, and has lots of links, apart from its own internal links, outside the EU, some of them based on the former colonial record of the countries so that we have, for example, the ACP – the African, Caribbean and Pacific countries – 70 odd of them, almost all former colonies of the UK or France or Spain, and therefore obviously also poor countries, not like the Commonwealth which contains some relatively rich countries like Australia, New Zealand, etc. The ACP has special arrangements. A new agreement was signed earlier this year at Cotonou in the African country of Benin, which will last for 20 years. The previous LOME convention between the EU and those countries has come to an end and the new one is meant to put right some of the defects in that it is meant to work in a much more modern way, far less patronising and far less simply: ‘Here’s us giving you aid’. Far more: ‘Here are ways in which your ideas about economic development can be encouraged’. It is very strict on corruption and on any inefficiency of spending of the funds; 9 billion Ecus was left unspent because of hopeless management, some corruption and inefficiency. That is an awful lot of money which could have been used.

Now I have to be careful here about structural changes, because we all know about the structural adjustments asked for by the World Bank and the IMF, many of which were absolutely hopeless because they caused cuts in public expenditure, therefore less spending on education and health – the very ways in which you make your country more prosperous is to have well educated, healthy citizens. So we’re not talking about the same thing, but we are talking about encouragement to more efficient economies so that the role of science and technology would be enhanced.

There are very strict rules about corruption: any evidence of corruption and the funding will not go, and I see that Clinton is using the same weaponry. He is giving tariff-free access to the United States for all goods from the least developed countries, the very poorest. However there are 14 countries, mostly in Africa, which he says will not qualify because he is not satisfied with the level of reforms and the abolition of corruption in those countries, and he is using that tool to ensure that things get put right. We also in the European Union are offering tariff-free access to our goods………

(more to come soon)

Thank you very much. You are having two presentations by politicians; I hope that’s not too much! It is actually important that politicians understand your priorities. We do vote laws, set up programmes and priorities and most importantly we do allocate funding in order to have networks like WiTEC – money very well spent in that case.

As far as politicians are concerned, the under-use of women in science and technology is a big waste of a valuable resource which handicaps our economic development, as well of course as encouraging the process of discrimination which we seek to combat. So in two ways it is very stupid to have a policy where over half the population are not able to fulfil themselves and contribute.

It’s also dangerous if more than half the population have inadequate education in science and technology at a time when important decisions have to be made, sometimes with ethical implications, and where their participation as active citizens is essential. So there are lots of reasons from the politicians’ point of view where the current state of affairs is unsatisfactory.

Working in an international organisation, I am convinced that there is huge value in making international comparisons and puzzling out why some parts of the world and some countries do very much better than others, and we know from the statistics that have been gathered that is indeed the case as far as women and science and technology is concerned.

The issues I said were of concern to us in the wealthy part of the world are even more important in the poorer parts of the world in the developing and least developed countries, where the contribution of women, their intelligence, their brains and their aptitude to solve questions which require science and technology, is paramount. I am very pleased to learn of the initiatives in a country like South Africa, which is concentrating, in a project I shall be studying shortly, on the role of women in science and technology, beginning with the education of young girls.

I am always pleased when I can speak somewhere where the European Union is doing something positive. It is nice for an MEP to be able to say ‘this is good’. I’m not always sure the audience appreciates that; here, I hope you do. If it were not for the existence of the European Union, and its executive branch, the European Commission, you would find that many of the networks, the conferences, the programmes, simply could not exist. The European Union has created a body able to administer immediately those programmes which are given political push, and I work very closely with the Ministers for Research, with whom we negotiate over the Framework Programmes as the Parliament. Once we and the Council of Ministers have made our decisions, the European Commission (and you have here an excellent representative of the Commission who will speak to you later), then do the business: get things working, check out what is going wrong, give us suggestions for how we might improve things in future. That’s what will happen between the Fifth and the Sixth Framework Programmes.

We have had some good Commissioners. Edith Cresson was criticised for a lot of things, but on women and science she was very good, and it was her will-power which pushed forward the initiative on women and science which enables people like Nicole to work with political approval within the Directorate-General for Research. Her successor, Philippe Busquin, who has only Research in his portfolio, is adding to the work of Mrs. Cresson and is also showing strong political will.

The European Union itself runs research programmes, big in terms of money, although in terms of the percentage of research undertaken in the EU relatively modest, but it is important that within those programmes we give a good example by insisting that research is done for women, in other words looking at the interests of women in the programmes we design; by women, with good participation by women scientists; and about women, looking in the socio-economic parts of the research programmes at exactly what the gender perspective is in a lot of issues, but in particular in research, and many of you will have received funding from the European Union for that type of work: it is very important.

Now some things puzzle us. Why, in countries like Italy, Portugal, Spain and Finland do women do very much better as scientists and engineers. There must be a reason. Why, in those countries who are applying to join the European Union – Hungary, Rumania, Poland, Bulgaria – why is it that there has been in the past very high participation? Interestingly, I had a discussion with one of our participants this morning on that very point. You might like to look, because if we can see what happens there, perhaps the good work could be replicated.

The management and implementation is important. You know that decision-making on what projects are funded and who is funded are made overwhelmingly by men. You know the GOBSAT acronym – it means ‘Good old boys sat around a table’ – a very old tradition in most of our civilisations: get rid of it. We do need to have far more women at decision-making level, deciding what programmes will come in. The European Parliament has 30% women, better than many national parliaments but not yet good enough, but the advisory groups, those who actually decide in detail on funding, have very poor participation of women despite the efforts, with political will behind them, of the European Commission.

Shortly I think, we shall be instituting some scrutiny process; to say, the Fifth Framework Programme is well under way, but how are we doing? How many of these advisory groups did we get with adequate female participation? How many women scientists are participating, etcetera? One of our roles in the Parliament is to scrutinise, and we shall take that seriously.

The co-ordinating structure, which Nicole Dewandre will tell you about later on this afternoon, may not be adequate for the tasks that we as politicians will impose on D-G Research. We really do want to know. This is not somewhere where we just say warm words and put in amendments saying equal opportunities will be observed. I can assure you that the politicians in the European Parliament will scrutinise, and that will require adequate resources and in particular a well-resourced unit within D-G Research, if we are to get the answers to our questions.

The Fifth Framework Programme was different from the Fourth because instead of there being a list of 20 specific areas of science where, on the whole, scientists said ‘Well this is what we are working on, chaps; a little bit more money wouldn’t go astray and we will carry on working in this area’. That was the Fourth. In the Fifth we said ‘No, this is science being done for the citizens of Europe because there are questions which worry us within Europe. There are questions which are environmental; questions of lack of competitiveness. That is why we ended up with programmes with titles like ‘The City of Tomorrow’. Now I know from my many contacts with scientists in my area, which is the R&D area of the United Kingdom of course, with the big pharmaceutical companies and Cambridge and Cranfield and other universities, that some of them thought ‘Well, I’m blowed if I’m going to write a sociological essay about ‘The City of Tomorrow’; I work on this technical aspect of energy.’

Therefore, there was a period I think when it was difficult for bids to be written in the correct way, looking at what we were actually asking for. I am hoping that by the time the Sixth Framework comes, where I guess the emphasis will be the same, that will have been cracked and scientists will realise we want multi-disciplinary work where we look at

society’s problems. That’s legitimate for European research, which is only, after all, about four to six percent of the research undertaken. We have to focus and make sure there is strong European added value.

Please make clear to us your experiences of the Fifth Framework, and what you would like to see done better in the Sixth, and remember that the voting is done by the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament, so although the Commission are obviously the executive and the ones who come up with the ideas for us to accept or reject, when it comes to the vote it is the politicians you need to speak to.

What is worrying us in the European Parliament? First of all, starting with the young, we are concerned about the teaching of science in schools. I would actually like to institute a European Parliament award for the worst example of stereotyping in the textbooks used to teach science, and I would be quite happy to chip in some funding to buy them a big wooden spoon. I have seen modern textbooks with still-continued stereotyping in the illustrations, in the examples, as if we had learnt nothing about how to put off half the population, and make them feel this obviously isn’t for me because there’s not one picture of a girl doing anything in this book. So please, if you have got examples, send them to my ‘Hall of Fame’ and I will expose them, given that politicians have access to publicity stunts.

I am interested in the notion that single sex schools, and perhaps within mixed schools, single sex teaching, make an appreciable difference. Please send me your findings on that. I am told that the best way to ensure that a girl becomes a scientist or engineer is for her to be born to a father who is a scientist or an engineer and to have no brothers, because then the father will concentrate on her; if she has brothers the old stereotyping will take place.

So that worries us. We are very worried at the drop off, and this isn’t simply for women, in the study of hard sciences at A-level in the United Kingdom, at post-16 level and even more so at university level. This is actually reaching crisis point within most European Union countries, and it isn’t fair to say, well don’t worry, we will do like the Americans; we will go round the world hoovering up the best scientific brains from elsewhere. That isn’t fair on those countries, and it’s not the right way to proceed. That is a serious problem for us.

Like many of you, I have spent a portion of my working life in an overwhelmingly male environment, and I do know the psychological difficulties and the pressures that brings to women trying to work in such an environment. I know that the career problems of women who choose to enter politics are the same that you face, and I would wish that in some ways we could bring in, compulsorily, a change of attitude. Some women researchers report to me of an overwhelmingly male atmosphere with male jokes and a male ambience where they work, which is off-putting; ridiculous, workaholic excess hours being proof that you are a serious scientist; and of course alongside that, neglect and disdain for family responsibilities of both men and women. It is very hard to keep up if you are looked upon as a slacker if you go home before 8.30pm at night, which is the case I am told in some laboratories.

I would like some jobs which are overwhelmingly female, such as nurses, to have the scientific and the technological side of their work sharpened up, with the whole structure of nurses and midwives made far more demanding in terms of science, and perhaps therefore far more rewarded in terms of pay. I speak with some passion because my daughter is a midwife, and having seen the way that midwives in every country in the world as far as I can see are undervalued, I would like a little bit of recognition in the jobs not always recognised as scientific.

We are going to do our scrutiny, but I suspect that we will be very disappointed in the number of women, despite our efforts, taking part in scientific decision-making, even within our Framework Programmes. Interesting us is the work in applicant countries and of course in the developing world where the EU does fund programmes, without much female participation. In some countries I think we should be rather prescriptive and should say ‘You won’t get the fellowships and the grants unless you are sending an adequate proportion of women. It is simply not good enough to tell us you haven’t got any women and you can’t send them; that won’t do, and you won’t get the money’. That would certainly apply to some countries in the world.

I’m told that our mobility programmes, although very welcome, and, I hope, to be boosted in the Sixth Framework Programme, since part of creating a European Research Area is to have considerable mobility, are very tough for women. I was told this morning that the bureaucracy and the lack of ease with which you can work, live and study in different European countries, is extremely high, and that if we don’t make it easier for people to have pension plans which are transferable between countries, to have housing allowances, and generally an easing of the bureaucracy, which can become a nightmare, people will not participate in those mobility programmes. After all, Europe is not meant to be like that: there is meant to be freedom for people to live, work, study and travel throughout the European Union. Mrs. Cresson did do a report on the barriers to mobility, and we must again have a check up to see if anything has improved. Thank you for that feedback from those of you that have experienced those problems.

We are concerned, and this was highlighted in a meeting I took part in this week along with Mrs. Dewandre, that sometimes the scientific knowledge and ability of women doesn’t allow them, for one reason or another, to have the entrepreneurial skills which they need to set up small companies. Representing Cambridge, I am aware in the biotechnology industry of a lot of spin-off companies and start-up companies, and many of the big restructurings in areas like pharmaceuticals and the privatisation of some former government research establishments, is leading to people possibly being set adrift. Not enough women in that situation are grasping the opportunity to set up their own enterprise or their own research facility. That is my strong impression from my contacts in an area where you would expect it to be happening more. What’s the problem there? Why haven’t they got the confidence and the knowledge and the entrepreneurial ambition to be doing that? Maybe you can let me know.

My last point is to remind you once again that when you do your lobbying, don’t forget Members of the European Parliament, and in your own countries, Members of your national Parliament and your Ministers. We get an awful lot of lobbying, far too much probably for a healthy balance - from big industry, aerospace, big energy, the nuclear industry, pharmaceuticals – all telling us what should be in the Sixth Framework Programme and what they would like. Very rarely do I hear from groups of women scientists with any response as to whether we are fulfilling our aim of having equal opportunities highlighted.

Everyone in this room, if they live in an EU country, has access to MEPs, and elections concentrate the mind very powerfully. As voters you are entitled to say ‘Look, here are the problems: what are you doing about it?’ And don’t just speak to those MEPs who are half way converted because they are on the Research Committee or because they are well known for their interest, tackle the others that have never shown interest at all in those areas. Say to them ‘Do you realise how important research is? Do you know we are losing out because of inadequate female participation, because of discrimination? What are you personally doing about this?’ We do respond to comments from our voters and our electors. I’m sure that Mrs. Beckett, who is a metallurgist by training, would be very pleased also to tell you that she would welcome support because she, for a long time, has been fighting this battle very effectively. Obviously we haven’t won yet.

Transmuter technology has arrived. It holds a promise to rid the world of all its plutonium as well as the most damaging radioactive nuclear fission waste within a generation. It is still ‘nuclear’ and so presents us with a dilemma.

To help resolve this let us recap the main problems of nuclear power.

It leaves nuclear waste that future generations will have to deal with for hundreds of thousands of years.

It produces material for nuclear weapons - in particular the world stock of some 1400 tonnes of plutonium.

In the unlikely event of a nuclear reactor accident the outcomes could damage the ecosystem of many countries for many years. In the UK we still have sheep prohibition orders due to the Ukrainian Chernobyl accident in 1989.

Radiation leaks or discharges damage human health including germ-line changes.

The industry in the UK and elsewhere was linked to military needs and was sheltered from public scrutiny in an atmosphere of secrecy.

It never became ´too cheap to be worth metering´. In fact it is nowadays more expensive than wind-power.

With a pedigree like this there would seem to be little else to say. In a liberalised electricity market, without public subsidy, no utility would build another nuclear power station.

But the nuclear industry is well entrenched in the corridors of power and has a number of themes that might run. Global warming and climate instability is one - we must reduce carbon dioxide emissions which in turn means very considerable shifts to renewable energy sources. In the opinion of the nuclear industry it also means a shift to nuclear power.

The industry believes that the waste problem is solved with deep geological storage - it is just a matter of detail and the moulding of public opinion. It further thinks that the plutonium inventory is an asset - it still has a wish for fast breeder reactors. Its method for reducing this inventory, especially with military plutonium in mind, is to use it in MOX fuel. This keeps a reprocessing industry and also increases the amount of plutonium ('locked up' in highly radioactive used fuel rods). The overall plutonium increases unless the reactors use more than about 50% MOX.

The industry believes that we will all one day see sense and subsidise the building of their new European Pressurised Water Reactors being developed by large industrial groups such as Framatome using funds provided by the outdated EURATOM treaty. This still exists to promote nuclear power and provides E100 million of public money in research funds each year.

I believe that a sea change is needed and that the industry carries out what the citizens of Europe and the wider world require:

The elimination of its radioactive waste.

The elimination of its weapons materials.

Neither of these is about generating electricity and citizens should not be forced into paying for anything else such as a new generation of nuclear power stations. Citizens will only sanction (and help to pay for) elimination priorities.

It now seems realistically possible to eliminate all weapons materials and at least some of the most damaging fission products. Environmental organisations should insist that the nuclear industry adopt these new possibilities. Environmental organisations as well as the European Parliament should force the nuclear industry away from generating electricity and into elimination technologies.

The technology that is now possible, on an industrial scale, is to transmute plutonium and other radioactive waste into non-radioactive materials. The director of Greenpeace, Lord Melchett, indicated to the House of Lords select committee on nuclear waste that if it were possible to change radio-active waste to chalk then Greenpeace could accept its burial. This new transmutation technology does not actually produce chalk but it does produce safer waste.

What is this new transmutation process and why are we not using it?

It is new

The nuclear producers do not want it

It will cost money.

Any one of these reasons is usually sufficient to prevent the implementation of a new technology.

The Scientific and Technical Options Panel of the European Parliament, which issued its report in November 1999, examined the process. It concluded that there are a number of proposals for industrial scale demonstration plants and that all the individual nuclear scientists agreed that the process is feasible.

A leading proposal is by Nobel Laureate Professor Carlos Rubbia, previously the director of CERN (European Nuclear Research Centre). It involves a beam of particles from an accelerator (such as a cyclotron) creating an intense beam of neutrons (by a process called spallation) that transmute the target material into non-radioactive elements. An example is the infamous (Windscale 1957) iodine 129, half-life 16 million years, which could be transmuted to the inert and non-radioactive gas Xenon.

This process is carried out within Thorium (as opposed to uranium) and can be stopped by turning off the electricity supply to the cyclotron. The turn-off is important because it is different from nuclear power station reactors, which run on chain-reactions that can get out of control (as in Chernobyl). In this process there is no chain reaction that could get out of control.

Importantly the process could transmute plutonium into fission products and then make them non-radioactive in a second step. Unlike the use of plutonium in MOX this actually reduces the plutonium inventory. The Rubbia team showed that a Spanish nuclear reactor using MOX would create 14 kg of transuranics (mostly plutonium) whilst an equivalent transmuter would destroy 34 kg.

Prof Rubbia calls his proposed device an Energy Amplifier and this highlights a significant aspect of this transmuter. To make the cyclotron work needs a large amount of electricity; fortunately the transmutation process produces heat energy from fission that could be changed into electricity by standard methods. Depending upon the system chosen about 5 times as much electricity could be produced as is put in. This could well pay for the cost of destroying the radioactive waste!

There are many significant other details to the scheme including a new partitioning (separation) method and technical problems that would arise in scaling the process up from laboratory to small industrial scale. The STOA report, amongst others, does not see these as insuperable problems. It does mean, however, perhaps a 10 year process to build a demonstration transmuter at an estimated Euro 50 million a year. This figure, although not trivial, is inconsequential in comparison to the cost of a nuclear reactor (Euro3 billion) or the costs for geological storage (many Euro billions) or the non-monetary cost of leaving our nuclear problems to future generations. The nuclear industry has funds set-aside or hopes to find funds for some of these more conventional activities. It is not beyond its wit to divert part of these funds to this new, more useful, technology.

The European Commission, via its Karlsruhe laboratory, is currently receiving EU funds to investigate aspects of this process. However it is necessary to put pressure on the Commission and the Council of Ministers to divert even more funding from its undemocratically controlled EURATOM nuclear programme into transmutation technology. So money could be made available.

Whatever happens the future existence of a nuclear industry is assured because of the legacy of power stations to be decommissioned and the management of radioactive wastes. These exist as problems now and will employ people for the foreseeable future and beyond. It could equally well employ people for the next century with a changed direction i.e. into transmutation technologies.

The bottom line is should the EU:

push the nuclear industry into building an industrial scale demonstrator transmuter that could lead to greatly reducing the amount of plutonium and radio-active waste left for future generations;

or

leave the nuclear industry to push its own solution for getting rid of its radioactive waste and plutonium - deep geological repositories combined with a new generation of MOX reactors.

The proposal to subsidize the service sector by a levy on the engineering sector seems at best short-sighted. As an overall average industry uses more energy per person than the service sector - it is an outcome of the manufacturing process. The manufacturing sector already suffers from the high exchange rates in part caused by the emphasis and weighting given to the service/financial sector within the over-all economy.

Manufacturing has been better than other sectors at improving energy efficiency whilst the service sector has made less progress on improving efficiency. It would then seem logical for manufacturing to be penalised less. To the contrary these proposals seem to reward this lack of progress by the service sector!

Manufacturing in the UK has declined because of the past lack of government commitment in terms of grants, R&D funding, etc compared to other sectors including the heavily subsidised agriculture sector (which employs less than 2% of the work-force). An energy tax that is meant to be ‘revenue neutral’ but which turns out to be a mechanism for further damaging the manufacturing sector (and hence increasing unemployment) needs re-engineering. There has to be a better way!

Another cause of regret in the proposals is that whilst making renewables exempt the proposal does tax any electricity produced and sold by renewables. The object of the exercise - climate change levy - is to reduce CO2 emissions by, amongst other methods, encouraging renewables. The proposal of neutrality to renewables vis other electricity production thus stands in stark contrast to the lack of neutrality for the manufacturing vis service sector.

The concept of taxing energy as a climate change initiative is suspected, not just by environmentalists, as likely to be used as a back-door tax for general revenue raising. As I understand these proposals, £1.75 billion would be raised by the levy but only £50 million (2.8%) of this spent on rational energy use and production - the rest on non-climate change matters. It would seem appropriate to increase the 2.8% to well in excess of 50% which would additionally help to reduce the subsidizing of the service sector by the manufacturing sector.

Thus these levy system proposals need modifying to reduce the possibility not only of damage to UK manufacturing industry but also damage to the useful tool of environmental levies in general.

Iceland seems a beautiful, very unpolluted, country which I hope stays like this. Pollution is, of course, subject to trans-national boundary pollution via the seas and the air. Subject as well to your own growing problems with transport.

It is blessed with vast amounts of renewable energy - obviously hydro-electricity and geothermal heating but also with potential for wind and wave energy. I hope you might become a renewable energy exporter. Obviously you will have investigated ‘frozen energy’ - Aluminium production. But are you working on hydrogen storage systems such as methanol - easy to export and an ideal fuel for existing cars as well as future fuel cell powered cars? As I understand it you can mix it with petrol for current car engines as well as using it for fuel cells. You have an ideal situation. You could help the environment - not only of Iceland - but of the whole world; and at the same time create jobs and exports.

Kyoto and its follow on meeting in Buenos Aires shows that noise is being created over global warming. It does not mean anything is actually being done but it is a sign that environmental policies are increasingly coming to the forefront of many political agendas. I like to think that it is a sign of a technologically matured society, a society that has gone beyond the crude requirements of its initial industrialisation, that has allowed the EU to take a world lead in reducing the impact of global warming.

The EU Commission suggested an energy tax and a CO₂ tax some years ago but resistance of some Member States governments has kept it from getting very far. It is again back on the agenda following the Kyoto EU commitments to reduce the basket of greenhouse gasses. My own country - the UK - is committed to an even more stringent reduction - 20% less than 1990 levels by 2010. This will be very difficult to achieve and means that we must alter our fuel mix - from coal to wind-power and gas for electricity and in general from fossil fuels to increasing amounts of renewable energy sources. Parallel work is in process on increasing energy efficiency and rational use of energy.

Taxes are very beloved of governments - they are relatively easy to implement and of course they help the Exchequer. Environmental taxes have less resistance from the electorate - not much - no taxes are actually popular. But governments tend to be easily frightened by industrialists who have vast vested interests in avoiding changes. Not many oil companies want reduced sales! Consequently taxes are not usually sufficient to actually cause change. In the UK we have an environmental tax on car fuel that will increase by 3% a year. However cynics point out that there is no corresponding legal requirement to manufacture more efficient cars and, alongside the actual cost of changing a car, means that car users have little opportunity to take realistic action that is supposed to arise from an eco-tax.

Taxation can also hit unevenly and disproportionately. In the UK we are concerned that our poorer citizens need to spend a higher proportion of their meagre incomes on fuel for heating, etc. Some industries are much more energy intensive than others - notably chemicals and steel-making. If a tax is put on them that significantly increases their costs compared to their competitors in, say, Japan or the United States of America, they become, understandably, very upset. Industry and increasingly aware electorates will increasingly question governments so that simple taxes will become less likely.

However new taxation tools such as ‘hypothecation’ (a tax collected for a specific purpose) are emerging. For example a city parking tax is collected - preferably calling it something else such as a levy - and spent only upon improving public transport. Similar to hypothecation is ‘tax neutrality’ which may be a means by which the EU might succeed in introducing an energy tax. Here tax might be collected on energy and all of it used to reduce employment costs - i.e. reduced social security payments. This might be successful but will still be resisted by energy providers who no doubt will lobby governments to say how impossible this is. Interestingly recent lobbying on reduced sulphur in diesel fuel watered-down EU legislation because it was not possible for oil refiners to change quickly without enormous - disproportionate cost. In real life they seem to have been successful in providing low sulphur diesel throughout the EU - years early and with lower cost!

There are other tools than taxation. In particular there is guided research and development. Governments can create the R&D infrastructure in a technological area by funding it - or in the case of the EU R&D framework programmes - part funding it joint with industry. Much initial (pre-competitive) R&D on fuel cells and electric vehicles was and is EU framework funded until industries start to implement it. Fuel cells R&D is now being turned into real cars by Daimler-Benz amongst others. This is a slow process but the partnership with industry has the added advantage that industry seemingly competes to carry out the R&D and so has some ‘ownership’ of it and consequently perhaps are more likely to utilise the directed R&D.

Demonstration projects is another way that governments and the EU help to guide industry. For example new traffic management systems are often EU demonstrations as are photo-voltaics used as building cladding in a project in Newcastle. Once the technology has been demonstrated in real situations then innovators and industries can have more confidence in marketing them. Many of these demonstrations are expensive but with the pooling of resources of all the member states of the EU make it possible - indeed it makes it even possible to afford the fusion dream at 250 million ecu a year - less than 20 Mecu per member state. The warning here is to not make the demonstration projects too long-term - build in a ‘turning-off mechanism’.

I hope that Iceland will join in with EU R&D.

As well as EU demonstration projects there are many member state government projects typically with governments subsidising industry. In the UK for electricity generation we have the Non Fossil Fuel Obligation (NFFO) where the governments pay extra for the electricity generated from approved schemes such as wind-farms, energy from waste and energy crops. Any form of subsidy, especially long-term, is a powerful tool - usually with queues of applicants. The difficult part is getting the money to pay for it without calling it a tax.

Another tool is legislation. This is very powerful. In Iceland your traffic emissions will be less severe because of EU legislation to reduce them such as catalytic converters and improved fuel specifications. The EU pollution control legislation is helping not only to clean-up our environment but also altering the ways that electricity is generated and making new industries in such things as household waste. Indeed all the legislation to help renewable energies is creating many jobs. Denmark is now a world leader in wind-power with many tens of thousands of new jobs - all caused because Danish legislators legislated for wind-power some years ago. I really believe it takes political will to improve society and this is best expressed via sensible legislation.

If legislation is too much for industrialists (and the governments that they lobby) to swallow there is the ‘voluntary agreement’ approach. Here the industrial groups and legislators come to an agreement with the threat of legislation if no agreement is reached or if voluntary targets are not met. Currently going through the European Parliament is one where the vehicle manufacturers have voluntarily agreed a 25% cut of CO₂ emissions per kilometre with the European Commission. Parliament does not like such agreements because they are usually weak and not really what they pretend. In this case there are let-out clauses, poor statistics and long time-table. However it might work.

Sensible is a key word - there must be more than a politicians feelings - it needs solid science and research. For example the ideas of environmental and energy taxation possibilities needs research before implementation. A particularly useful study is the EU EXTERNE project which has attempted to determine the true costs of energy conversion to electricity. There are some frightening results that make it more likely that the EU will use even less coal in the future. Alongside the idea of a scientific basis for legislation comes the idea of gathering statistics and measurement and their standardisation. It is surprising how many different ways one can measure traffic pollution - you really do need common standards. Once a measurement system is implemented then this leads to sensible legislation with industries and businesses implementing marketable products. It is another subtle way of directing technology.

Preamble

I come to this talk feeling a little like David entering the lions den or perhaps the Welsh Bodicea facing the massed ranks of the Roman army. I am sure that the impression you have of the European Parliament and I suspect, of any parliament, is not too enthusiastic.

Energy and the environment

In September 1998 a Royal Commission study of Energy and the Environment asked interested parties for responses to a number of questions about energy sources, improvements in energy efficiency, implications of climate change, social issues and international considerations.

My responses were sent in October 1998 and the Committee questioned me when they visited Brussels in January 1999. The questions and responses are reproduced below.

1    In the light of political, economic and social constraints, what key policies would be needed to force the pace of adoption of renewable sources of energy in the UK on the scale required to replace fossil fuels by the middle of the next century, and how could such policies be implemented?

It is unrealistic to consider the replacement of all fossil fuels on such a short time-scale - fossil fuels will phase themselves out, perhaps over hundreds of years, in response to market and innovative technology factors. The requirement is to considerably reduce their use to take into account the possible/probable green-house effects.

The new Labour government is committed to increasing the proportion of renewable electricity to 10% by 2010. However, it seems at this early stage, that the very useful NFFO project funding will not be strong enough to increase the program to meet the target. There are a number of difficulties with NFFO funding (e.g. - non-take-up, blocking bids, lack of prior planning permission, etc.) and of course the fact that it has not achieved its 1.5 GW target. An alternative, additional, mechanism is required.

Utilities are not easily impressed with possibilities - they require certainty in making investment decisions (which is the positive side of NFFO) - they require even more demonstrated commercial production. The government should therefore instigate demonstration projects - for example in off-shore wind, global warming-free coal, etc. Funding could be from a demonstrator/R&D levy on all traded electricity in order to redress the drop in such R&D occasioned by the ‘new’ market orientation of utilities. A typical sum might be 0.03pence/KWh (about 0.4% increase on domestic prices) raising over £100M p.a.- sufficient for a number of demonstrators.

Another method of increasing renewables (and energy savings) would be to require and enable local authorities to maximise opportunities in their own areas in partnership with local industries and organisations. Areas such as Milton Keynes would be keen to exploit all the many local micro-opportunities - if only legislation gave them reasonable powers which could perhaps be combined with government guidance within the local Agenda 21 initiative.

2    Are there environmental impacts of renewable sources of energy which would be critical limiting factors?

The definitions of renewable fuels used in UK include methane from land-fill sites - currently the cheapest ‘renewable’. It is however unsustainable in the longer term if such waste is increasingly recovered by other methods such as recycling and incineration with energy recovery. Deliberately increasing waste tips would be environmentally bad.

There is obviously a visual intrusion scenario with wind-farms on some sites and so there is a need for ’wind-belt’ planning areas , similar to green-belt legislation, which would help to limit planning delays which are a major problem for some projects and one of the reasons for the reduced realisation of wind-farm NFFO projects. Such ‘wind-belt’ areas where wind-farms are either permitted or not should, as a matter of urgency, include coastal waters - offshore wind-farms have tremendous potential and could easily provide the 10% in a new phase of wind-farm building as recognised in the latest NFFO round.

There are numerous environmental issues associated with bio-mass production (other than current farm/forest waste). The agricultural production of such crops as willow should not be allowed to create the same damage as that from current farm production of wheat, etc. where hedgerows disappeared and nitrates and pesticides are put into the environment. The opportunity should be taken to repair our landscape as energy farming becomes a significant activity

3  Which renewable sources of energy are likely to offer most scope in technical terms in the UK ?

The potential of UK near-off-shore wind farms is enormous - easily able to cope with the 10% figure. Small demonstration farms are already in operation in Denmark and Sweden so the concept is proven and being considerably extended. Serial production of wind-turbines and their placement and operation would not only produce the required electricity but it would also provide jobs - including at ports with difficulties. The costs would decrease with quantity. A number of demonstrator projects are needed to prove the system in the UK context.

In the late 70’s and early 80’s it was decided that wind-power in the UK could never be profitable and would never produce any grid electricity. Now, only 25 years later, it is recognised that new on-shore wind-power is cheaper than new coal fired stations and getting cheaper. However, because of the UK government’s 1980’s wrong choice in its ‘choosing winners’ policy, Denmark and Germany are the world market leaders and gained exports and jobs.

For electricity production wave-power has a similar potential as wind. The UK is one of the world’s best areas for obtaining energy from the waves. R&D was stopped shortly after 1979 but is now just re-emerging as some other countries have started to research their own wave-energy potentials. Wave-power could be of great significance once there is (fiscal) encouragement. This would require government support as the major energy R&D organisations now have much more limited time-horizons. It is an obvious candidate for EU collaborative R&D - currently ongoing in the Azores and Scotland but, because of the UK’s geographic position, it might be more advantageous to fund our own R&D to a much greater extent.

Another major UK resource is, of course, bio-mass with its implications for agriculture. It is unlikely that the UK will be best served by producing bio-diesel - rather it would seem the most significant use would be in very local, small scale, heating scheme as well as electricity production in local CHP schemes. The technologies needed, including co-firing with other fuels and gasification techniques have all had significant EU R&D and now require energy producers and other organisations to implement schemes. The problem has been highlighted by a keen, local company - ‘we cannot fund the project until we can be sure of a fuel supply and farmers will not start on a coppicing scheme until they are sure of selling it’; the classical chicken and egg situation.

4   Is there a realistic prospect of technologies (for example of sequestration of carbon at source of emission) that would make continuing use of fossil fuels as an energy source acceptable?

Injection of CO₂ into old gas/oil fields and aquifers is currently the subject of EU R&D as well as commercial practice (e.g. Norway). Aforestation is another possibility - perhaps Southern Spain or the Sahara.

However all techniques would be costly and there are many more cost effective ways of quickly reducing CO₂; energy efficiency being the most significant. We should not hope for some easy ‘technological fix’.

There may be a case, in terms of diversity of supply, etc. to enable coal to remain a significant long-term player in the UK energy scene during a period of commitment to reduced CO₂ emissions. EU research within the clean-coal area of the JOULE programme has carried out much R&D which shows how current and near-future technology can separate CO₂ during coal gasification but with a financial penalty in the order of 18% or more additional cost for each unit of electricity compared to non-removal. The costs of such new stations (e.g. Integrated Gasifier Combined Cycle with Rectisol removal of CO₂) seem lower than for new nuclear stations with which it might be compared in terms of CO₂ emissions. There is still a problem of where to bury the CO₂ but the injection R&D could provide this - we have more than sufficient natural gas reservoirs both on-shore and in the near North sea which are gradually emptying. It awaits a demonstration project to integrate the gasification and CO₂ disposal - there will be no commercial investment until a demonstration unit is built and running.

5  What might conventional nuclear power contribute? To what extent will its contribution be dependent on:

innovation in technology?

establishing valid disposal strategies for wastes?

public attitudes?

Conventional nuclear power needs to gain public acceptability on waste disposal methods as well as being less capital intensive to build if it is to have a renewed life in the middle of the next century in a liberalised market that is essentially not publicly owned.

It might achieve this if the transmutation of long-lived fission fragments into stable isotopes can be achieved at zero extra cost as is proposed within the EU fifth framework R&D programme (Rubbia device within EURATOM) - if the Council of Ministers do not force the deep budget cuts currently proposed. Apart from monetary costs there is the need to ensure that any resulting programmes do not produce over-emphasis on nuclear power by thinking of it as a technological fix - it would still only produce electricity for grid distribution. The bulk of our energy is heat and liquid/gaseous fossil fuel energy for transport, domestic heating, etc. and these are likely to remain the requirements.

6  Should fast breeder reactors or nuclear fusion be regarded as potentially viable energy technologies in the next century?

No - the necessary R&D will not have been put in to change the breeder reactor scenario from its very high start-up costs and safety concerns. Europe, including the UK, has closed this option.

The current proposals for fusion generated electricity, even in the unlikely event of continued R&D support, will not produce a power station from which free market utilities could make a profit. The current R&D is EU framework funded with all EU governments, inexplicably, still paying for it. There is an idea for joint collaboration with Japan, USA and Russia. However, for realistic commercial exploitation, ‘new physics’ is needed and without this new physics fusion will not even be an option until the late part of the 21^st century at the earliest.

7   Can UK primary energy demand be stabilised by the middle of the next century? Can it be reduced over that time-scale, and if so by how much?

Unfortunately the perception that GDP growth is linked to energy growth has been firmly implanted into the economic-political culture and exploited by energy utilities. There is no doubt that the historical link exists but it is a concept of an earlier industrial era - today we are smarter! Study after study of real situations (e.g. THERMIE studies within the EU) has shown that technologically realistic use of energy efficiency could reduce the need for primary energy by 30% or more. The question that should be examined is how useful, end-use energy, might be tailored to our societal needs whilst reducing the primary use of energy. The very act of doing this creates useful jobs, increases competitivity and consequently increases GDP all with a fall in primary energy consumption. The small overall efforts that the UK has made to date in energy conservation has lead to a negative GDP/unit of energy of about 1% so an improved effort, if there is a connection, would give an even greater negative figure!

There is no reasonable doubt that primary energy from fossil fuel use could be reduced by 30% over the next half century (only about 0.5% each year) whilst still keeping the same end-use energy services. Any increases in final energy services could easily be from renewables. For example cars could be built (and eventually will be) that are at least twice as fuel efficient; cutting over 16% from our current primary energy use. The EU legislation to do this has been resisted by motor and oil manufacturers (aided by national governments) although the car industry has recently agreed, at EU level, a voluntary 25 % cut - political will on the part of the secretive Council of Ministers is seemingly weak.

It is possible that cuts in fossil fuel use even larger than 30% will be required, however, the immediate target should be to achieve the new Labour government 20% CO₂ target by 2010; which by peaking and reversing the historic trend is challenge enough and significant enough. Further targets, possibly beyond 30%, should be left to, say 2006, when experience has been gained from the current shift and in the light of the (better) knowledge on global warming at that time.

8   What are the actual and potential drivers and barriers for reducing demand for energy? How are the drivers and barriers affected by the structure and regulation of the energy market? How could the drivers be enhanced and the barriers reduced?

Some barriers to reducing demand for energy are :

a) equating primary and end-use energy so giving the impression that reduced energy means sitting in the dark. Citizens do not want to sit in the dark! What is needed is plenty of light where it is needed but with little primary energy used. We must transform our culture to think more of the services provided by energy.

b) allowing primary energy producer companies to over-rule society’s needs. These companies have traditionally made their profits from increased sales. Ways have to be found to divorce profit from volume sales or to over-rule powerful industries.

c) Acquiescence to enfeebled EU and UK initiatives that are ill-funded, not enforceable and which are used by energy providers as delaying tactics. For example in the UK electricity supply industry only about £1 a year per domestic customer is used to improve efficiency. This enables the industry to highlight its energy efficiency work whilst achieving very little of the potential gains - it is virtually a marketing ploy whilst keeping volume sales.

If there is a real desire to cut fossil fuel usage we need to be more forceful with legislation. Business enterprises, understandably, do little that does not show a quick profit or for which they are not paid unless there is some legislative requirement and subsequent monitoring. Their job is to make a profit so that their enterprise thrives - it is an example where each working for their own ends damages society. Exhortation only works where there is a marketing angle, e.g. new market opportunities or useful publicity. Direct legislation might hurt but it works.

9   In comparison with other strategies, how attractive is reducing demand as a way of reducing the impact of energy on the environment?

Demand side management of any system is a sensible option because it reduces the costs of providing, in this case, energy such as electricity and gas. This should, however, not be at extra cost to the consumer - industry, private citizens et al would expect that if there were limitations there would be reduced costs. The proposed EU directive on ‘rational planning in the electricity and gas industries’ (still held back by the European Council of Ministers because of lobbying) seeks to ensure that both parties to demand side management benefit - the win-win situation.

‘Reducing demand’ should be clearly seen in terms of sensible and rational energy usage i.e. efficient use of primary energy which give the required end-use of the services provided by energy. It is a very attractive scenario that produces the same, or more, useful outcomes with less input. It also, in the longer term, pays for itself and gives a profit. However rational use of energy is only one strategy - there is still a need for a significant proportion of replacement of fossil fuels. ‘Reducing the demand’ by reducing the use of energy services or increasing their costs will not be productive in the longer term as citizens, eventually, reject limitations as too much of an imposition.

10   What contribution can increased efficiency of generation and distribution make to reducing the environmental impact of energy?

The significant efficiency improvement in generating electricity from fossil fuels rising from about 30% for coal fired stations 20 years ago to the 55% for current combined cycle units using natural gas will only continue to the extent that natural gas is allowed to penetrate the market. The low carbon content of natural gas as compared to coal is a very significant additional benefit. Any further improvements in efficiency from coal fired generation are likely to be taken up by the need to burn it more cleanly. However the extensive work at European level (within the JOULE programme and currently under discussion within the CARNOT program) on coal gasification suitable for combined cycle electricity generation could give overall efficiencies of, say, 46% for coal. Unfortunately coal will always produce more carbon dioxide, sulphur, particulates, etc. than natural gas for the same amount of electricity unless more advanced and costlier techniques such as carbon sequestration are used. It is now time to seriously address the commercial possibilities of sequestration if there is to be any long-term future for coal.

A major UK efficiency gainer for the future is combined heat and power, with the new Labour government giving a commitment to at least 10% by 2010. Enterprises like factories and hospitals will increasingly generate their own electricity and use the reject heat for heating purposes where, depending upon the mix, efficiencies up to 80% are possible. Everything should be done to help the spread of CHP within the UK. We are well below much of the rest of the EU in its use.

The distribution network is a major user of energy because wires have electrical resistance and the further the distance the electricity travels the greater the losses. The percentage of power lost in transmission can, in some instances, be in the order of 30% and care needs to be taken to ensure that the grid is suitably reinforced to stop such occurrences. This means regulation to prevent excessive distances - especially when the costs are hidden - such as could occur by importing from perhaps Austria to the UK - now possible in the increasingly liberalised market.

As this Commission is looking at the longer time-frame one should consider that end-users may make considerable increases in generation efficiency from such technologies as gas driven fuel cells - perhaps combined with fuel cell driven cars. There is also a strong probability that gas-driven domestic micro CHP systems will generate electricity as a by-product from heating. The open market means that these systems and others will require to export to the local grid as well as importing from it and such ‘embedded micro-generation’ will need a culture change to ensure that regulators, grid managers and local providers take due cognisance of this.

Overall there is still a considerable margin for yet more efficiency improvements in generating and distributing electricity; enough to give at least another 10% electricity as well as considerable heating services with no increase in fossil fuels.

11   What more needs to be done to integrate concern for energy efficiency into professional training and practice in fields such as architecture, engineering and land-use planning?

There need to be modules on energy conservation in all professional training associated with building construction and maintenance. At present few schools of architecture seem to give training in passive solar techniques and integrated energy systems. The few building projects in the UK that attempt such integration (e.g. passive ventilation) are newsworthy because of their rarity. The same seems to apply throughout the European Union - there is a strong case for concerted action for common EU training/education modules as well as the harmonisation of qualifications. Additionally local authority planning/building control departments should integrate these concepts into building requirements similar to the rather weak ‘insulation’ legislation. This can only be successful if suitable and adequate training is required of town planners.

12   How should considerations about energy efficiency enter into determinations of what represents the best practicable environmental option and into implementation of the EC Directive on Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control?

The UK accepted the directive, alongside all other member states of the European Union, and has chosen to bring forward some planned future improvements. It is unfortunate that this effects the coal industry at an awkward time. However the days are over when citizens health could be ignored to ameliorate industrial problems. Other ‘solutions’ to the coal problem are necessary! The ‘external costs’ of ill-health due to sulphur and other emissions are not inconsiderable - the Externe EU study of such costs shows that the National Health Service may be funding this ill-health to the extent of about 0.2 p/KWh (£200 million a year). The cry of ‘foul’ by utilities and some UK coal producers should be considered as a ploy to extract subsidies. The concentration on acidification is not the major issue - rather it is the changing scientific evidence that links S0₂ ,particulates and public health.

In general, environmental considerations will increasingly be more significant than previous generations accepted from their governments. There is a clear need to redress the balance when industrial growth could ride rough-shod or be unaware of the environmental legacy it was leaving - now citizens matter. In energy terms, as in all other environmental vis industrial conflict, this means that ‘best available technology not exhibiting excessive cost’ will increasingly need to include ‘external’ costs. Close political scrutiny of the word ‘excessive’ would seem appropriate.

The difficult case is global warming - a theory - but one which the UK and the EU have decided needs serious precautionary measures over and above the ‘no regrets’ policies that have guided previous government/industrial actions. Politically the global warming scenario now has enough momentum to be a significant player in all foreseeable future energy policies. The current ‘best guess’ external costs of global warming are very, very high for coal (and oil) and once these are factored into costings very significant differences in approach, such as sequestration, become obvious.

13   Where should lead responsibility lie for promoting energy efficiency, and are additional powers required?

The DTI obviously treats energy in a different way from that of the DETR - it is the same within the European Union. There does seem to be a case for separating energy from the industrial and production side to more accurately reflect the needs of citizens as both users and tax-payers increasingly become aware that they are paying for pollution effects. The balance needs to be more pro-citizen than pro-industry whilst realising their necessary symbiotic relationship.

Over the years the DTI has instigated many excellent examples of improved energy efficiency within industry and, even with its very limited budgets, has made good progress in getting some organisations, who would not otherwise have done so, to become more efficient. However energy efficiency has suffered because of utility (and government department) reticence faced with becoming too successful. Separated energy efficiency policy and energy policy related to energy production does not aid proper consideration of rational energy production and utilisation whilst the new global warming imperative requires such over-sight.

There seems to be a need for a ‘one-stop’ shop approach as is increasingly practised elsewhere. The UK should transfer all energy matters to the DETR except perhaps for such things as the commercial licensing of our oil and gas reserves. Such a transfer might also go some way to redressing the balance from utilities and their lobbyists.

14   What measures should be taken in the UK, in the European Union and in other parts of the world in order to adapt to environmental changes that are inevitable as a consequence of higher concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere?

It appears likely that climate change and climate instability will have significant effects on many aspects of society - many of which are probably yet to be discovered. Fortunately, although the changes are very fast in geological terms, they are slow in terms of human society and hopefully will take decades to unfold and because we live in a technological society we have the opportunity to adapt.

Within the UK it is reasonable to expect that agricultural land-use, new (to the UK) diseases and flooding will be most noticeable and consequently we need to prepare an infra-structure that can cope. At these relatively early years in the story the need is for increased research to plan ways to adapt followed, perhaps in a decade, by demonstrations of new crops, etc. The decision, recently taken, to accept certain coastal erosions is a preamble to possible harder choices about preserving, or otherwise, low lying areas such as the London basin and parts of Eastern England and could have significant costs. Here again research is crucial to help with the decision making process. Legislation should be enacted now to change codes for building and other structures such as roads and bridges to reduce the impacts of climate instability. Any efforts at storm and flood resistance may well have significant useful pay-back in the coming decades!

Other factors that could well affect the UK are the ‘knock-on’ effects from other regions of the world - massive population shifts and requirements for aid could be very significant.

The EU as a legislative body is limited by both funds and the subsidiarity principle. However it could play a significant part if its R&D were widened to include the amelioration of global warming and this must be given priority in the 6^th and subsequent R&D framework programmes - if necessary by a revision of the treaty just for the effects of global warming. The individual states within the EU will obviously need to react and determine the most significant problems in their own way. However many problems will be similar and their effects will often cross borders requiring stronger EU powers to allocate resources, help with any population shifts, etc.

Throughout the rest of the world the main problems will be for developing nations who might have significant harmful changes such as permanent inundation of large inhabited or agriculturally significant tracts such as could be envisaged for Egypt and Bangladesh. Changes to regional agricultural patterns could also cause problems. It would seem appropriate for the EU institutions to carry out research that can identify the most significant difficulties and help co-determine how best to ameliorate them. It will also need to help with funding!

15   Is the factor which effectively limits utilisation of fossil fuel reserves likely to be requirements to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases, or the availability or distribution of reserves, or the relationship between the cost of exploiting those reserves and the cost of competing energy sources? How different are the respective limits on fossil fuel use likely to be imposed by these three constraints?

Recoverable reserves and their discovery depend so much upon the selling price that in ‘normal’ times it would seem that we have enough fossil fuels for the foreseeable future. With current low prices we still have more than sufficient fossil fuels for many decades - indeed we (the UK) are, along with a number of other countries, effectively throwing away vast reserves of coal. Reserves or their distribution will not be a significant constraint. With more than sufficient reserves market prices of fossil fuels will not help to limit fossil fuel use, rather the price will encourage use. However the current market prices do not include many environmental (and social) aspects.

If true prices for fossil fuels, including greenhouse effects, sulphur, etc., were established in the market place then alternative sources would become more than viable. Indeed some of the various forms of solar energy are viable in today’s market heavily weighted by history to coal and oil. If low taxes and other easements were not available for exploration and extraction of oil this would be some help in the problems of global pollution but individual countries would need to be extremely altruistic to forgo oil revenues. There is little sign of this.

Technology is ever advancing and offers a way out of the dilemma. Fuel cells offer higher efficiencies as do such technologies as CHP and CCGT. Much greater efficiencies in transport, electric motors, insulation, etc. are the stuff of rational energy use technologies. Wind and bio-mass will become even cheaper as technology and practice evolve. These are all newer technologies with scope for many improvements unlike the mature oil and coal based technologies with limited room for further gains. With sufficiently determined investment in these newer technologies some will displace fossil fuels (at lower cost) so that a market solution becomes possible.

Unfortunately we do not have the luxury of time. We need to act now so that our children and grandchildren are not over-burdened with the results of our mistake of over-use of fossil fuels. We must legislate to considerably shorten the market cycle. Our legislation should obviously concentrate upon our own excesses in the UK - it would not only give us the ‘moral high ground’ but also produce exports and jobs. It is also necessary to try and introduce global reduction legislation using the EU - this will prove very difficult until global warming disasters increase. If and when such disasters are firmly attributed by populations at large then the UK could be ready with technological solutions.

Overall, with legislative and financial support, a reduction in fossil fuel usage can take place without hardship and indeed with some gains for other aspects of the environment as well as increased jobs. The current market gives many advantages to fossil fuels and will continue to act against the newly perceived public good unless mechanisms are developed that utilise real costs (i.e. including external costs). Altering the relative strengths of these two opposed trends needs political will and judgement. Citizens will increasingly require that the political will is successful.

16   How will different strategies to reduce the impact of energy on the environment affect different groups in society?

The problems will largely be at the extremes - on particularly poor and disadvantaged people, on energy intensive industries and on entrepreneurs in the energy field.

Any changes for poor and disadvantaged people must be positive, in particular by increasing the warmth of homes and decreasing travel costs for isolated communities. Continuation and rapid expansion of the good work of insulation and other energy efficiency schemes currently taking place or planned are part of the answer. However transport for isolated communities could be aided, not only by improved public transport, but also by arranging suitable free exchanges of old cars for low energy new cars (similar to schemes in France, Italy, Greece).

Energy intensive industries need access to the cheapest bulk supplies but what has to be avoided is the distortion of markets to aid these industries which then cause increased costs elsewhere. This happened previously when industrial users were subsidised at the expense of domestic users or currently when ‘cheap’ coal is imported from some countries where despoiling the environment is not charged for. ‘Cheapest’ should include external costs and it should be a priority for the UK, via the European Union, to insist that the World Trading Organisation make it mandatory to include ‘external costs’ of energy as subsidies being given to energy intensive industries - otherwise the market is not free - it is distorted.

Most to gain are entrepreneurs in the energy sector (often in SMEs) - from energy efficient processing equipment for industry to those selling packaged CHP units. Much that has been done in terms of changing energy legislation has supported the growth of this employment creating sector and, because the UK is a leader, there is considerable scope for more export growth. Further legislation could mean even more jobs and exports.

17   How can approaches be developed to reconcile reductions in demand for energy with greater equity in access to the services provided by energy?

Whenever energy taxes are imposed the poorest are disproportionately affected - they have little ability to change sources or invest in new technology and energy costs form a higher proportion of their expenditure. Studies and practice have shown that increasing energy prices has little effect on reducing consumption when there are no reasonable alternatives - traffic consumption is still growing rapidly despite year on year increases in fuel tax. Government imposed ‘market forces’ taxation avoids the issue of reducing primary fossil energy and at the same time the population is alienated, especially the poorest.

More imaginative legislation is needed such as enabling selective replacements of old cars, fridges, TV’s, tungsten filament light-bulbs, etc. at reduced cost (or even free). The problem of the relatively small initial financing could be from a hypothecated additional tax on, say, stamp duty or capital transfers that would have little effect on the poorest.

18  What will be the health effects of different energy strategies?

Any strategy that reduces the living standards of our poorest (for example by indiscriminate energy taxation) will mean poorer health for them - there is a clear link.

Any strategy that reduces the emissions from road transport will have a positive effect on health - for example less diesel means less particulates. Improved fuel efficiency - especially in association with speed reductions - means improved health. Stronger legislation, in conjunction with the EU, is needed.

Any strategy to increase the proportion of nuclear power means unquantifiable health risks to distant future generations unless long lived nuclear waste can be made safe within, say, 100 years (e.g. by transmutation).

International considerations

19  Are future trends in market prices likely to move the UK energy system in the desired direction, and if so how quickly?

Market prices of fossil energy sources are currently low - unpredictably so - and could remain like this for many years. A successful 20% reduction in CO₂ programme means 20% less fossil fuels probably resulting in even lower prices (unless coal and oil companies arrange price-fixing cartels similar to OPEC’s efforts). Mechanisms to over-rule market forces may be necessary to achieve long-term aims that are inconsistent with continuing low fossil fuel prices that would otherwise reverse the slow trend away from a fossil-fuel based economy_. Governments will need to organise sustained, guaranteed, financial support for renewables and energy conservation and eliminate subsidies to fossil fuel exploration and extraction.

20   Should the UK adopt policies to phase out the use of fossil fuels in the absence of equivalent action by other countries?

Fossil fuels will not ‘phase out’ during the first half of the new century - what is needed is a considerable reduction in technologically advanced countries such as a 30% reduction in fossil fuels used in the UK. Liquid fossil fuels are very useful for transport and will probably remain the prime energy source for this - the aim is more efficient use with less pollution aided by such technologies as fuel cells, lower weight vehicles, etc. Fossil reduction policies will go hand in hand with market policies to gradually reduce their use over the next century - it is just a matter of initial policy decisions, to be made in the next few years, and the very long-term cost of exploiting fossil fuel reserves (including such external costs as global warming) compared to the costs of exploiting alternative energy sources.

The argument that, say, the USA, might not adopt reduction strategies and that we must follow such scandalous behaviour in order to be ‘competitive’ does not hold water. Evidence exists to show that energy efficient companies are more profitable than uncaring companies. Energy efficiency improves competitivity, creates employment and gives rise to exports whilst of course raising the quality of the environment for all citizens.

21   How should the UK seek to influence the development of policies internationally to limit fossil fuel use? How can a sufficiently wide coalition be formed to obtain agreement on a global carbon tax?

The UK, via its Presidency of the EU, has been successful in obtaining some small international agreement (Kyoto) on limiting green-house emissions. The fact that the USA coal and oil lobby corrupted the process and its final resolution did not prevent a widespread increase in public awareness. There will be continued public pressure throughout the EU and the USA to keep this continually on the political agenda. For every unusual flood or storm the public will blame global warming - the larger the flood the greater the degree of pressure to take political action.

EU environmental policies are increasingly shaped by citizens, via Member States and European initiatives and the EU is the lead body in international efforts to limit fossil fuels use. The UK should, in future years, influence the EU to achieve a reduction strategy and continue to take the lead in global policy initiatives.

Future policies could also include countries that are flouting reduction strategies being sued in international courts by countries that suffer - for example Bangladesh could well consider suing for damages on a pro-rata basis of CO₂/capita above the ‘sustainable’ level for CO₂ production. The UK, via the EU, should support such a policy.

The idea of a global carbon tax and trading CO₂ quotas needs agreement between developed and developing countries who currently produce little CO₂ in comparison to the major polluting countries. The act of negotiating such an ‘agreement’ is probably a device used to delay implementation. We should seek alternatives to a carbon tax that, to be an effective deterrent, would be very large - energy is too inelastic and the poorest would pay disproportionately. There is however perhaps a case of using a very limited carbon tax as a funding mechanism to replace fossil fuels on a country by country basis and not requiring protracted international negotiations. A more positive world-wide approach should be limited to possibly taxation on lack of efficiency improvements and lack of growth in renewables.

A side effect of carbon taxes would be to help the nuclear industry who make great play of their low carbon dioxide emissions. If a carbon tax does take place there is a case for introducing a parallel tax on plutonium production - now realised to be a major pollutant that could cause another kind of global warming if used by the wrong people. Such a tax would be an ‘even handed’ approach to both fossil and nuclear energies.

22   Does research need to demonstrate specific national impacts of global climate change before the people in a country will be prepared to support strong international action to counter it?

No. All countries’ citizens will press their governments to do something whenever a weather disaster occurs - these will happen prior to any research which could, with any confidence, predict changes as small as an individual country. It may be possible to be reasonably confident on global weather change patterns in less than 30 years but as yet it is too early for anything but strong precautionary activities. It is probable that any actions we take now will not be effective for some years and in any case if we are successful with limiting green-house warming we would see no effect whatsoever! We are not in a scientific scenario.

23  What scope is there for the UK to profit from exporting or licensing commercial technologies developed for clean energy supply?

Prospects are excellent. The EU and the UK in particular are very prominent in many of the commercial possibilities. As stated in previous questions there is great sales potential in many countries with consequent employment gain. Strong UK encouragement of our domestic markets helped by strong policies on renewables, efficiency, clean coal, etc. will garner a greater proportion of the long-term global future energy technologies market. ‘Clean’ and efficient coal burning is particularly important for countries such as China which already has seriously polluted city air and the UK record on these technologies gives a strong home base from which to work. However UK energy policy does not (yet) support, on a commercial scale, the latest technique of gasification. This needs to be urgently redressed.

It should not be forgotten that renewables and rational energy usage are also usually ‘clean’ supplies - in fact ‘super-clean’ when global warming is a consideration. The estimates of global sales potential in such new technologies are very considerable; we must ensure a reasonable share for the UK.

Thank you very much.

 

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